


feel alive

by leere



Category: South Park
Genre: Character Study, Dark, Gen, Guns, Murder, Relationship Study, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:46:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22930450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leere/pseuds/leere
Summary: A serial killer with a single victim. It's strangely profound.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	feel alive

**Author's Note:**

> I started this ages ago as a vent fic. Finally finished it. Gah, me and writing SP fic that involves murder. Smh. Major content warning for this one, btw; lotta dark shit, but if you saw the tags and clicked, you're probably here for a reason.
> 
> I don't condone murder or gun use or any of that shit.

When they're thirteen, Cartman hands Kenny a crinkled twenty dollar bill and a pistol and tells him to blow his brains out.

"Huh?" Kenny asks.

"Shoot yourself." Cartman sits down on his bed. He puts two fingers to his temple. "Right here."

Kenny squints at him. He looks at the gun in his hand, then down at Cartman's purple carpet. The blood would surely stain it. What would Liane say?

"Kenny," Cartman says, and Kenny looks up at him. "Do it, and you can keep the cash. That's, what? Ten boxes of Poptarts? A weeks worth of waffles? Maybe some McDonalds?"

Kenny's stomach growls. He's fucking starving. He can go home and get Karen, and they can go to a fast food joint and eat like royalty. Or, he can listen to Cartman and stock up on cheap stuff and keep himself fed for a few days. Either way, he'd kill for some food, and he's going to. Himself, anyway. It's probably sad that he's been reduced to this.

He puts the money in his pocket, because he always wakes up with whatever's in his pockets at the time of his death. Cartman somehow seems to know this, or at least trust Kenny's judgement, because he calmly watches as he does so. The blonde frowns. He was aware that Cartman knew about his immortality, he just never thought he'd acknowledge it.

He lifts the gun. "You trust me with this thing?"

"I trust that you know your sister will starve if you end up in jail for killing me."

"We're kids, they can't put me in jail."

"Whatever," Cartman says, waving a dismissive hand. "Fucking do it already, asshole."

For a moment, Kenny's angry, and he wants to shoot Cartman in the fucking throat, watch him bleed out, watch the color drain from his fat fucking face, but then he sees Karen's big brown eyes and he scowls.

Before he can have another change of heart, Kenny puts the gun to his head and pulls the trigger.

He can't hear or see it, because he's dead, but Cartman smiles to himself and eyes the body, impressed with how easily he'd persuaded Kenny and how cleanly his plan was working.

* * *

Two weeks later, Cartman commissions him again. They're at school, eating lunch - Stan and Kyle are oblivious, talking about some teacher that they both hate. Cartman and Kenny are sat beside each other, and Kenny's staring forlornly at Kyle's barely-touched tuna sandwich when he feels something touch his thigh.

He looks down. Cartman's trying to shove two crumpled twenty dollar bills into the pocket of Kenny's cargo pants. "What are you doing?" he asks quietly.

"A little incentive," Cartman says easily, voice low. "For you to come over to my house later and shoot yourself again."

"I don't wanna make that a regular thing, dude. It's weird." He doesn't exactly trust Cartman - never has.

"Forty dollars, Ken. You're not just gonna steal my money without earning it, are you?"

"I absolutely will."

"But you won't. Because then this won't happen anymore, and you'll never make a quick buck from me ever again."

"I don't want blood money."

"Okay, edgelord-"

"I'm the edgelord? You're the one using my dead body for fuck knows what-"

"Shh!" Cartman says, eyes darting to Stan and Kyle. They're still deep into their conversation. Cartman looks at Kenny. "Are you in or not?"

Kenny's got a pretty firm moral compass, much as he wishes he didn't. Fair's fair. Besides, it is easy money. He could really use it.

"Fuck you," he says.

"Is that a yes?"

Kenny stays silent.

"Come over at four," Cartman says, sitting back, a satisfied grin on his face. "You can have dinner at my place. Mom's making lasagna."

* * *

Liane's a great cook, so the food's worth the awkward experience that is having a meal with Liane and Eric Cartman. Cartman has three plates, heaping piles on each. He talks with his mouth full, about school and gossip and reality television. Kenny stays silent, scarfing down two plates himself until his concave belly's distended, and an additional three glasses of milk because he hasn't had it cold in years - the McCormick's fridge only keeps things fifty degrees, so not only does stuff spoil pretty quickly, it's also always lukewarm and sub-par, though he never can find it in him to mind.

He watches Liane, who's trying to seem like she's interested in Cartman's blabbering. She's not - she keeps glancing down at her lap, which Kenny can see from his seat has her phone on it. Cartman doesn't seem to care. Kenny can relate to that; his parents value material things over him, too. Granted, he thinks it's more justifiable in his situation, when they're fairly destitute. Then again, maybe he should be more bitter that his family has nothing but each other, and still Kenny and Karen are the only ones who seem to genuinely look out for each other.

When dinner's over, Kenny and Cartman head upstairs. Cartman slams and locks the door, then goes into his desk drawer and produces the same glock as last time. This time, however, he aims it at Kenny instead of handing it over.

"Bang bang," he says.

"I don't wanna play, dude."

Cartman laughs, and it's a mean laugh. "It doesn't matter what you want. I paid you, so you have to listen to me."

Maybe all the times the boys had joked about Kenny becoming a prostitute were right. Just not in the way they'd imagined. He's selling his body and his dignity, but not in a way anyone else could. "Eric, I don't like this whole thing. It's weird, it makes me uncomfortable, and it's just plain fucking _weird_."

"I don't see how you're complaining. It's a way to use your one-of-a-kind talent for money. How could you be mad about that?"

"It's not a talent, it's a curse, and I don't wanna become a circus freak."

"I won't treat you like a circus freak. We've been friends for how many years, Ken? Almost a decade? Over a decade, I think. You can trust me, buddy."

"As far as I could throw you."

Cartman lifts the gun again. "This time, I wanna shoot you."

Kenny feels like an object. A morbid child's toy. Something to be played with and thrown out when interest is lost. But he's been the universe's plaything for years; why not be Cartman's? "What if someone calls the cops about the gunshot?"

"Dude, it's South Park. No one blinks an eye at this shit."

He's right. Kenny closes his eyes and waits. The gun shot doesn't come. He opens his eyes, and suddenly things go black.

He goes to hell, as usual. Satan tries to chat with him. Kenny doesn't prove to be an enthusiastic conversationalist. Satan eventually gives up, and Kenny wakes up in his bedroom a short time later. He dreads seeing Cartman's face, but at the bus stop, there he is.

The first time around, Cartman had acted normal the next day, and Kenny had decided to try and forget about it. This time, he won't stop grinning at Kenny during class. There's something worse in his eyes, something dark and cold. It's new, and it's scary. So when he asks Kenny to come over again, three days later, Kenny mulls it over for a long moment.

When he ultimately says yes, he feels sick to his stomach.

* * *

It becomes a weekly pattern. Cartman pays Kenny a chunk of cash and then Kenny kills himself, though occasionally Cartman requests he be the one to pull the trigger. Kenny slowly stops caring. At least he's finally getting something good out of his immortality. He's made maybe three hundred bucks by now, which is more than a small fortune for him. He's spent quite a bit of it, always in small doses so his parents don't question where it's from. But he's managed to pay off his dad's debt to one of the seven loan sharks he owes, and have some money leftover to buy Karen gifts. She's recently gotten more involved with art, so he buys her a brand new sketchbook and top quality colored pencils. She's so happy about it that she cries. Kenny cries a little, too.

So in the long run, he's unbothered. His initial discomfort has worn off, because the pay-off is pretty decent; he can handle some unpleasantry if it means taking care of his family. The only thing he dislikes is that he doesn't know what Cartman does with his body postmortem. He's a little paranoid that he's doing weird necrophiliac shit to him.

Eventually, when they're alone together, playing basketball at the empty park, he works up the strength to ask, "What do you do with my body after?" 

Cartman doesn't hesitate. "Cut it up."

"You cut it up?"

Cartman nods. "To see what's inside."

"So it's scientific?"

"You could say that."

"Huh."

Strangely, he finds that reassuring. If he thinks too hard about it he gets disgusted and anxious, but objectively, he's happy his immortality is proving useful for someone, and in a grotesquely academic way.

"Do you have to dispose of my body every time?"

"My mom's not allowed in our basement anymore," is Cartman's simple reply.

A serial killer with a single victim. It's strangely profound. Kenny's okay with that, he thinks. He's a humble guy; never thought he would amount to much, and he'd been content to resign himself to that - so he doesn't mind if his life's purpose is being an accessory to another person's. His fate is intertwined with Cartman's, of all people, but he can't find it in himself to resent it, even if it's underwhelming. Maybe because he's protecting others by being Cartman's plaything, and at least that's something noble. Where Cartman's destined to destroy, Kenny's destined to _be_ destroyed, over and over and over - but now, maybe he can tell himself mass destruction is being prevented by his frequent sacrifices. It's a comforting thought.

_I am become Death, the savior of worlds._

* * *

Things get weird when they're sixteen. In the same bedroom, decor not having changed much but now suspiciously more red-tinged, or maybe it's just Kenny's mind playing tricks, Cartman hands him a hundred dollar bill and instructs him to start jerking off.

"Um," Kenny says, but he's already pocketing the money. "What?"

"Get your dick out."

"Why?"

Cartman narrows his eyes, irritated at being questioned, as if Kenny's concern isn't warranted. "I wanna see if your dick stays hard when you're dead. I don't know how that works, and I'm curious."

"If you're doing weird shit to my body, Eric, I fucking swear-"

"I'm not! Jeez." Cartman scowls at him. "You're my chance to learn about shit I can't Google, alright? And anyway, it's better you than people who can actually die."

Kenny purses his lips. "Are you sure you don't just wanna see my dick?"

Cartman huffs and waves a hand. "I don't care about your dick, dumbass, I care about what death does to your dick."

Kenny shrugs. By now he's immune. He turns around, because damned if he lets Cartman watch, and slips a hand into his pants. He's felt lonely lately. He wonders if Cartman ever feels like that. So he asks.

Cartman sounds annoyed. "What?"

"Do you ever get lonely?"

Cartman actually takes a moment to consider it. Eventually, he says, "I don't think so."

"I do," Kenny says, eyes fixated blankly on a scratch in the floorboards, beneath his bare feet. His hand is working robotically, and it's not pleasurable - he's getting there, but he's not enjoying it. He feels like an android, humanoid but lacking sentience. Existing only for another's enjoyment, to be destroyed and dismantled at another's whim. Everyone's life was precious, but how could his be when he had so many? It all meant nothing. He no longer feels a sense of pride in keeping others safe from Cartman, not when pieces of his own soul were being chipped away in the process.

When he glances over at Cartman to inform him he's ready, he catches him with a strange little look on his face - an expression of what Kenny hopes is misery and self-loathing. That would make him feel better, if Cartman knew that he was a monster, if he had an awareness of how disgusting he was. He hopes he cries when he plays with Kenny's organs like a grim substitute for his long-abandoned dolls, hopes he can't sleep at night with contempt for the awful things he's done.

"Okay," he says.

"On your knees," Cartman says, getting to his feet, and Kenny would be wary, but he knows Cartman intends to take him out execution-style this time. He sinks down to his knees, feeling like less than a person. Perhaps he never was a person. Perhaps a freak like him deserved this, a lifetime of death at the hands of a devil unlike the kind one in hell - a devil with chubby cheeks and greasy hair and the emptiest eyes in the world. He wonders if Cartman hates his reflection. Kenny hates his own sometimes, mostly because the scars don't show upon his fresh skin, but he feels them. Each of his thousands of wounds, every one he's ever received, aches beneath his flesh - always there, always with him, but invisible to those who might care.

He's happy to escape to hell soon - he has his thoughts there, but in death, he's void of emotions. It's nice, when most of the feelings he experiences on earth are debilitating. He relies on it so some extent - he doesn't know how others tolerate _feeling_ constantly. That'd be his worst nightmare.

It's probably fucked up that he looks forward to being dead; that, oftentimes, it's preferable to being alive. Kinda funny, kinda sad. 

As the shot is fired and his limp body falls to the floor, Kenny feels at peace. That's probably not a good thing.

* * *

The next time he comes back, he makes a point to go sit outside in his driveway, neck craned back to observe the stars, and when he looks up at the sky, he doesn't see the whimsical world he saw as a kid. The enormity of the universe, with all its strange creations, had once been daunting to him, but now the world feels small and colored in with pencil, with far too many white patches and not nearly enough color.

The aliens and robots and superheros had died with his youth, and he's left in an unforgiving world, feeling empty and grey.

It becomes a habit, him sitting outside and absorbing the world, the one far beyond him. 

Sometimes the reality of his existence drains him. That he'll never know peace, because every time he begins, he ends not long after. The blessing the rest of the world takes for granted that Kenny will never experience is longevity. He can never think about life when every day ends with death. The beginnings don't feel like beginnings when they're marred by the inevitably of another untimely ending. Sometimes, he can't find a reason to keep waking up and facing down this every new day of his sad little worldly 'life'. It's too much, and there's nothing to grasp onto.

But then Karen will join him, sit next to him on the door stoop to escape their parent's violence, and she'll gaze up at the stars with him and say, "Isn't it magical? All those stars. There's so many." The wonder and innocence in her young voice keeps him going. He should probably envy her, that she can dream when he can't, but he can't bring himself to. It's the one thing that brings him joy; watching Karen discover the good in the world, how little there is of it.

He wonders, often, if he'll have a final death, and if he does, what it will be like. He hopes it's a good one. A peaceful one. He's had far too few of those. He'd like to die for the last time in a meadow, he supposes. He's never done that before. On his back, gazing up at the beauty of the sky - clouds or stars, he doesn't mind. He rarely has time to appreciate simple things like beauty anymore, and it makes him sad. Everything's too fast, too harsh. He wishes the world was quiet and soft, and that everyone had time to admire the pretty things life had to offer.

He hopes, in this hypothetical final death, that he'll be comforted by the true end, rather than afraid. That he'll be ready by then for everlasting peace. When he aches, he thinks he'd be ready now, but in his heart, he knows he's not. There's too much to do. People to take care of. People to protect. 

His phone buzzes in his pocket. A message from Cartman. He needs to rebuild him again.

Kenny goes.

* * *

Cartman's interests never expand, which Kenny's grateful for. The brunette never gets greedy, never asks for more than what Kenny's given him for years now - his body and soul, but not in the way Kenny, hopeless romantic that he is, would prefer. Any potential their situation could have had to possibly be even mildly alluring is ruined by the fact that this is, of course, Eric Cartman.

At some point, Kenny starts relying on it. Partly from a financial standpoint, because Cartman's paying for Karen's college at this rate, though Kenny still doesn't know where he gets the money in the first place - and partly because he's never felt this important. Maybe he's convinced himself of a false justification, something to make all his trouble seem worth it, but it's something to hold onto and to give him meaning. They've got some gross codependency thing going on, he knows. But he's making money off it, so he can't bring himself to resent the arrangement.

One day, they're working on a science project for their human biology class. They had to choose an organ and put together a presentation on it - Cartman chose the heart for them. Now, Kenny watches him idly tap his pencil against their brainstorming sheet.

They're at Cartman's desk. The gun is sat to Kenny's right - at this point, its constant presence in Cartman's otherwise average room is almost reassuring. Kenny traces the grooves of it with his finger.

"What does my heart look like?" he finds himself asking, because while it's been outside his body before, he's always died before he's had a chance to observe it.

Cartman doesn't look up. "One time, I shot you in a weird place, and you didn't die. It paralyzed you, but you didn't die. The shock put you in a coma. I carved your heart out. Like in movies. Opened your chest up and looked at it. It was beating still, slowly, but beating."

Kenny feels chilled. "Then?"

"I played with it until it stopped beating."

"And what did it look like?"

Cartman shrugs. "Like any other."

There's a frigid tension between them for a long few seconds.

Kenny finds it in himself to ask a question that's been on his mind for four years now, and his voice comes out quieter than he'd hoped it would, just barely above a grim whisper. "Why do you do it?"

Cartman knows what he means. He turns to look at him. "God kills whoever and whenever He wants. Why can't I?"

"So it's a god complex thing, then. You just want the control."

"I deserve the control."

Kenny touches the barrel of the gun. Cold to the touch. But inside, he doesn't feel a thing. "You know you're a monster," he says quietly; a final attempt to provoke some humanity out of the shell his old best friend has become.

"You're a breathing corpse," Cartman replies, tersely, like Kenny's wasting his time. He picks up the pencil and writes down, _The size of a fist - can be held in a hand._

"But you're emptier than me." 

"Yeah, you're half-dead, I'm half-empty." Cartman rolls his eyes, voice going monotone as if he's scripted this, yet it's still a chore to finally get to perform. "Us monsters belong together, Kenny. I can't feel, and you can't die. We're the rejects that can't be like everyone else. Stop moping about it and own up to what you are."

"Is that what you're doing? Just 'cause darkness got a hold of you at age eight doesn't mean you have to let it consume you as an adult. You can get away from it and be better."

Cartman slams his pencil down and whirls on Kenny. "You prefer being dead over being alive, don't you? It's comforting for you? It is for me, too. Killing you makes _me_ feel alive. And you letting me kill you helps you feel alive, because it's all you have. And if I didn't have you, I'd hurt other people. We work, and that's all there is to it. Quit fighting it."

It sounds crazy, but he's right. Even then, hearing the words makes Kenny's chest seize. Tears. A repressed sob. He wants to cry. 

"You're feeling," Cartman observes, eyes narrowed and impossibly dark. "Wanna escape it?" 

He doesn't even notice him lift the gun, but the bullet collides with his skull before he can bring himself to reply.

He's dark, and cold, and empty. He breathes in the nothingness, and it's the sweetest air he's ever tasted. He's safe. He's at peace. His meadow is a barren void, but it's a meadow nonetheless.

Tomorrow is another day.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't normally characterize Cartman as a sociopath, but we ventin'.


End file.
